The Spears' family values

Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell's press conference last week about steroid use in professional baseball spawned one predictable result: a lot of rhetoric about role models for young boys.

I would argue, though, that if we're going to warn kids away from famous people who are doing the wrong thing, we need to give at least equal time to some of the celebs followed by young girls.

Granted, we throw the term "role model" around a little loosely. Most girls don't pattern their lives on Britney Spears any more than most boys are inclined to make the life choices of, say, Barry Bonds. But you need only look around a middle-school playground to ap preciate the extent to which kids are influenced by celebrities, from Madonna to the Spice Girls to Britney to Hannah Montana.

Happily, imitating a "look" isn't the same thing as taking notes on life choices. A decade ago, Britney was the "omigod" of tweeners with their parents' approval. Here was a sunny, clean-cut, Disney-cer tified Mouseketeer who, in interviews, declared her pride in being raised right, enumerated her values as God and family, and vowed she wasn't the type to have premarital sex.

That was then. A few years later she startled us with a two-day pub licity-stunt marriage followed by a real marriage in 2004 to Kevin Fe derline, who had two children by a previous marriage. She and Feder line had their first child a year later, and their second a year after that. But things already were headed downhill, with Britney drinking, partying and spinning out of control. She and Federline separated. She cut off all her hair and was photographed trashing a car. She's been in and out of rehab and has lost custody of her kids to Feder line -- which, considering his own party-hearty lifestyle, took some doing.

So we turned to Britney's younger sister, Jamie Lynn, relieved that someone in the Spears family seemed to have her head on straight. Jamie Lynne Spears is the star of "Zoey 101," a very successful Nickelodeon series about a kid in boarding school facing issues real kids confront.

Nickelodeon has always sold it self as a safe haven, a channel parents could trust. It has successfully walked that fine line where the lingo and the look are real but the shows are populated with good kids who respect their parents.

"Zoey 101" is one of the stars in that galaxy, making Jamie Lynne a valuable commodity to Nickelodeon. She has a lot of her big sis ter's sunny look and seemed to have learned from Britney's mistakes.

Right up until last week, when OK! magazine hit the stands, and there was 16-year-old Jamie Lynne, a big smile on her face, saying, "I'm pregnant!" By about 12 weeks, it turns out. Apparently she kept mum about her condition until she could announce it on the cover of a celebrity magazine that pays cash for most of its big interviews.

The dad is 18, a member of her church group. Giving no indication of whether she and the father will marry, Jamie Lynne has said only that she's going to have the baby and raise it at home in Louisiana.

A chilling thought, that.

But more immediately, the whole sordid mess presents a tough call for Nickelodeon. The fourth and final 12-episode series of "Zoey 101" is shot and scheduled for airing this spring. Does Nickelodeon move forward as though nothing happened? If not, what? Teen pregnancy still being a problem in this country, Nick can hardly seem to be saying it's cool to have a baby at 16.

Fortunately, they have Linda Ellerbee on speed-dial. She's done specials-for-kids on AIDS, Monica Lewinsky, same-sex marriage and other topics. So now Nick is talking to her about a special on teen pregnancy.

These things, sadly, often end up mostly making the grownups feel better. But Ellerbee is skilled at them -- which is more than can be said for another prominent adult in this story: Lynne Spears, mother of Britney and Jamie Lynne.

On the evidence of her kids, you wouldn't be nominating Lynne for Mom of the Year. Yet Thomas Nelson, a publishing house that specializes in religious books and Bi bles, signed her to write a book on, yup, parenting.

You can't make this stuff up.

Happily, Jamie Lynne's announcement led Nelson to put the book on hold. When it comes to messages for kids, the Spears family has already given us about all the role modeling we can stand.